An old blues song about levees breaking. After you've listened to it, lets think about something.
I was watching TV the other night, a show called Inspector America, and he made a good point. Water is both an asset and a problem. We've got to have it, and too much of it will kill us. His point was that Nevada and the great American Southwest is under a drought. Lake Meade, just north of Las Vegas, is down 155 feet from normal pool stage. We all know from reading the newspaper that west Texas is on fire, in the midst of a horrific drought. Yet, here in Louisiana we're awash in water. We're literally opening floodways and spillways.
Now, Louisiana has some of the most capable pipeline workers in the world. I'd put our pipeline folks up against anyone. I also know that water will flow down a pipe. How come we can't run a pipeline to Lake Meade and shift some of this water to the west? Maybe with a couple of side pipes to west Texas?
It's a thought. Who'd pay for it? Hell, I don't know? We'll figure that out, but we've got lots of water seasonally, and other folks need it. There might be an opportunity here to make a dollar.
Hat tip to Bayou Woman for the song.
For years the thirsty state of California has looked longingly on all that fresh water flowing down the Columbia River and out to sea and wished that they could build a pipeline down the coast, at about the 25-fathom line, to carry a lot of it to California. I've heard that idea expressed with some regularity ever since I moved here in 1963.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that taking that water out of the Columbia (maybe: read Mississippi) destroys the river. Rivers are simply vessels with moving water in them. If you remove a significant amount of the water (I have no idea what that amount would be), the entire dynamics of the river changes, and as we know, if the dynamics changes, so does the river's course.
Another problem is political. To take water out of the Big Muddy, you would need the permission of every State and maybe every municipality along it's shores. If we can't agree on how much to tax ourselves in this country, how are we ever going to agree how much to pay for water and keep such an inter-governmental agreement going?
The third problem is money. If Oregon and Washington had sold Columbia River water to Kalifornica years ago, would our states be taking those worthless Kali IOUs now, and if so, when would we expect to get paid?
The problem of water for the salmon also muddies the Columbia River issue (which is REALLY muddy today because it's a half-foot below Flood Stage). The Federal Court has assumed ultimate authority over all river water to allow for up and down stream salmon passage in this region, and likely, any Interstate water agreement would have to be secondary to that Court.
Great dream, but too many REAL problems get in it's way.